If we set aside metaphysics, magic and mysticism, then what does it mean for something to be “universal”… for a scientific theory to be universaly true?
setting aside all the bizzare thoughts in our heads and looking at what we are ACTUALY DOING when we know something to be universal, holding the activities at arms legnth… well there is little there to be said except that we are using certain tools and that they are behaving in certain ways and such.
and when we reproduce those tools somewhere else somewhen else then they also behave the same way. Is this what it means then to be universal? to have a local and contingent situation reproduced somewhere and somewhen else? if so what is so special about that fairly mundane activity that means that we then praise it as demonstrating something to be “universaly true” rather than merely saying that it is an occasion, among many, where we reconstruct an activity somehwere and somewhen… that we create a new spring and a new weight and draw once again on thousands of texts and ideas and words and activities and objects, and preform the same routine procedure again.
just as, in the examples bellow, we once again create a cheese, drawing on networks of agriculture and horticulture and transport and economics and then package and transport and such this cheese over huge distance and time to have it appear “as if by magic” somehwere far away in another time.
isnt that the same process, metaphysics and talk of magic aside, as when we domnstrate the universality of a protein interaction or an animal behaviour or a function of velocity?
isnt the universality of a scientific fact merely the costly and time consuming process of universaling the SAME local tools and conditions… a lbaroratory, a body of texts and ideas, a ensemble of tools and measuring devices and such, a set of enviromental conditions, temperatures, humidities, habitats etc?
is that the process which so impresses or infuriates epistemologists? the same process which allows us to use a credit card in many different restuarants? the same process which allows us to shave in many different hotels?
held at arms legnth is nature simply the outcome of a complicated enrolling of a massive army of objects in a certain manner. the near-perfect reproduction of a local contingency anywhere we desire… is that what it means for something to then be universal? a mere tautology and an expensive one to boot?
Following from Latour’s “Irreducibility of the Sciences”
4.4.4
“Universality” is as local as the rest. Universality only exists “in potentia”. In other words it does not exist unless we are prepared to pay the high price of building and maintaining costly and dangerous liaisons.
…Do not accuse me of nominalism. All the parts of an army MAY be linked to a headquarters. The officers of the Strategic Command MAY work on a map of the world that measures three meters by four. All the clocks in the world MAY be syncronized if a universal time is built. I simply want the cost of creating these universals and the narrow circuits along which they run to be added to the bill.
4.5.7.1
Nothing escapes from a network, least of all know-how, but who doubts that a network which pays the price can extend itself?
“Prove to me that this substance which works so well in Paris is equally good in the suburbs of Timbuktu.”
“But what on earth for? There is a universal law.”
“I don’t want to BELIEVE in it. I want to SEE it.”
“Just wait until I have built a laboratory, and I’ll prove it to you…”
A few years and a few million dollars later in the brand laboratory I see the proof with my own eyes. I step away. I travel a few miles, and pose the question again:
“Prove to me that…”
When people say that knowledge is “universally true” we must understand that it is like railroads, which are found everywhere in the world but only to a limited extent. To shift to claiming that locomotives can travel beyond their narrow and expensive rails is another matter. Yet magicians try to dazzle us with “universal law” which they claim to be valid in the gaps between their networks!
4.5.7.2
How can knowledge be extended? Like radios that are made in Hong Kong, or multiplication tables! There must be buyers and sellers, teachers and commercial circuits, representatives and books that are held to be authorative.
We say that the laws of Newton can be found in Gabon and that this is quite remarkable since that is a long way from England. But I have seen Lepetit cememberts in the supermarkets of California. This is also quite remarkable, since Lisieux is a long way from Los Angeles. Either there are two miracles that have to be admired together in the same way, or there are none.